Hiring slows down in festival months

According to a report by job portal Naukri. com, the job index declined by 3.9 per cent in October as compared to September.

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Ranjana Kaushal

New Delhi

November 25, 2009

UPDATED: November 25, 2009 10:47 IST

The festival season might have been a good time for taking a break from office but for job seekers this has probably been the worst time.

According to a report by job portal Naukri. com, the job index declined by 3.9 per cent in October as compared to September.

Said Ambarish Raghuvanshi, chief financial officer, Info Edge, "During the festival season employers have gone slow on hiring because of lesser number of working days. Since, companies are gradually moving out of recession, HR managers are not comfortable hiring people during lean months. The lull in hiring could well be seen in December too." Naukri. com had launched its job index in 2008 and during July that year the index touched a high of 1,000. In December last year, the index fell sharply because of economic meltdown and touched 632 points. The signs of recovery were witnessed post May 2009.

According to the report, five out of top eight cities saw a positive trend in hiring activity in October as compared to September.

Chennai, Bangalore, Delhi-NCR, Kolkata and Hyderabad saw an uptrend in hiring activity by 7.05 per cent , 3.33 per cent , 2 per cent, 1.43 per cent and 6.6 per cent respectively in October as compared to September. Whereas Mumbai and Pune saw a decline in recruitment activity, which brought down the index by as much as nine per cent and 2.38 per cent during the same period.

The hiring during this period has been largely restricted to middle management and fresher levels. "There is a cherry picking tendency by employers while hiring senior management talent while the uptake for employees with an experience of 2-8 years has been good.

Fresher hirings have been moderate," Raghuvanshi said.

As compared to September, the information technologyenabled (ITeS)-business process outsourcing (BPO) industry saw an increase of 4.4 per cent in hiring activity in October. The banking and healthcare sectors also witnessed an increase in the hiring activity by 4.1 per cent and 12.43 per cent, respectively during the same period.

The hiring activity in the oil and gas sector bounced back in October with an increase of 4.8 per cent over September.

Telecom arena witnessed reduced hiring activity by 15 per cent in October. The auto and pharma sectors also saw decreased hiring activity of 8.9 per cent and 7.5 per cent, respectively.

During this period, the demand for sales and business development professionals bounced back by 1.3 per cent in October after showing a negative growth in the hiring activity by 3.6 per cent in September.

Raghuvanshi added, "Recently we have also seen that the demand for professionals in real estate sector has spurred due to the stress on infrastructure by the government". The index has been calculated based on job listings added to the site month-on-month. July 2008 has been taken as the base month with a score of 1,000 and each subsequent monthly index is compared with data for July 2008.

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